


Partners in Crime

by websthetics



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Aromantic, F/M, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2229270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websthetics/pseuds/websthetics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben and Bea discover they're being set up. They team up to enact revenge and in the process go on an adventure of self discovery.<br/>AU that diverges from canon before the Claudio debacle. Because I wish that had never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Discovery

“Bea, Bea. I’ve been looking for you all day.” Ben comes clattering up to Bea’s locker at the end of lunch, just as she is grabbing her books.

“Well, I can’t talk now, dickface, or I’ll be late for trig. Mr. Johnson.” (Ben nods sagely, those who are late to that class have to write a math themed Christmas carol and then come holiday time everyone sings songs like “Rudolph the Statistician”.)

“Okay, but this is important I need to talk to you.”

“Come over to my house after school,” Bea says as she shuts her locker and saunters off to go graph tangents.

\------

After school, when the two were safely sequestered in Bea’s room, she asked, “Alright, Benedick, what’s so important that you actually have to talk to me and I can’t continue ignoring you and having a peaceful life.”

“Like you’d ever enjoy a peaceful life, you argumentative harpy,” he says as he goes to her laptop and types the URL to a certain YouTube video.

“What did you just call me!? What do you think you’re doing touching my computer!? Leave my house right now!” but Ben merely turns the screen towards her. “Hero’s makeup bloopers. That’s disgusting. Why would you think-” She falls silent as the video cuts and there’s Pedro (the betrayer) crowing about trying to stave them off and Hero is wearing a self satisfied smirk on her perfect face and all the rest of their friends crowded together in treachery.

Bea watches in stunned silence for a minute and Ben watches her as she makes indigent faces, he can’t resist poking fun at her, “Really nice face you’re making right now.”

Bea hushes him until she asks, “Did you really show up on Hero’s date? I’d believe it. You’re insufferable and know no boundaries.”

“NO. Maybe. I had lost my Claudio to the tyranny of womanly wiles,” Ben all but howls.

“Don’t you dare talk about my cousin like that you absolute oaf.”

Ben hushes her as Pedro announces, “So we’re going to get them together.” They make identical retching faces.

Bea punches the pause button and practically yells, “WHAT.” She jumps up off of her bed and paces angrily. “Speaking of boundaries, here’s some other people who don’t know theirs. It is colossally inappropriate of them to pry into our lives like this! I. Don’t. Want. A. Boyfriend. How hard is it to realize that!” She collapses on her bed again.

“I know, love, they are being meddlesome beasties,” Ben says as sympathetically as he can muster.

Bea tenses up again, “Love! Don’t you dare call me Love! How do I know this isn’t some ploy of yours to make me date you?” She then makes some choice grossed out faces.

“Beatrice, you are more evil than a Dalek. I would never ever want to date you… except… I did want to date you… before I realized…” Ben’s head drops in his hands, “I’m just so confused.”

Beatrice is bewildered by the defeated looking Ben sitting at her desk, “Just… show me the rest of the video, okay?”

They watch in relative silence, only with Bea muttering things like, “How dare they.” and “That explains so much.” and “When I get my hands on them-”

When the video ends there is a long pause of quiet.

Bea says, “You know what we have do now, right?”

“Nooooo,” Ben draws out.

“Get revenge.”


	2. The Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bea and Ben further their plans for revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I don’t know how Ben learned about the video, it just happened.  
> Also, I don’t really feel like editing so mistakes may abound.

Ben smirks at Bea and asks, “Okay so what is your master plan for revenge? I’m sure a couple minutes in your company will be vengeance enough."

  
Beatrice jumps off of her bed in a fit of passion, “Oh shut up. My plan?! You’re part of this too, dickface. They wanted to ruin our lives, we should destroy them.”

  
Ben looks at her with horror in his eyes, “Of course you would say that, you tyrant.”

  
Bea’s eyes light up with realization, “but, like, we should try to meddle in their lives like they tried to meddle in ours.”

  
Ben stands up, “I’m out of here. You’re out of control. I just wanted to… um… commiserate or something, but here you are doing all this-”

  
“Wait. Just hear me out. So, our friends did this out of some, um, misplaced sense of kindness, right. So, if we, like, also meddle in a way that will make their lives better, it’ll be like what they tried to do to us.”

  
Ben sits back down on the desk chair, “Then, how do you plan to magically improve the lives of Pedro, Claudio, Hero, Meg, Balthazar, and Ursula?”

  
“I don’t know, am I supposed to come up with all of the ideas?”

  
“Yes, it was your awful idea in the first place.”

  
Bea brushes her hair away from her face, “Well, let’s make the first phase of the plan to observe them and see what they need.”

  
“Okay, sure, fine, whatever.”

  
An uncomfortable silence falls between them; Ben sitting at the desk, self consciously rubbing his hand against his cheek and Bea wrinkling her brow and biting her lip. She breaks the quiet by hesitantly asking, “What did you mean about the part where you were confused?”

  
“Excuse me?” Benedick asks incredulously.

  
“Um, like how you wanted to date me but you didn’t want to date me?”

  
“Y’know how everyone, or at least Pedro and Claudio and stuff, always act as though having a girlfriend is the greatest thing you can aspire to. So, uh, I just thought that after they told me you like me, which is obviously not true-”

  
“Obviously.”

  
“-I thought I might try the girlfriend thing out because they say it’s so great and stuff.”

  
Beatrice coughs out a laugh, “‘The girlfriend thing’ I’m sure you’re really likely to get a girlfriend when you call her something like that.”

  
“But like, I don’t even think I would want a girlfriend if it wasn’t for them always talking about it.”

  
“Okay then why did you think maybe me?”

  
“Er, ah, you’re not- uh, you have- ah um, why am I even- actually, I think maybe I should go home now.”

  
Beatrice laughs again as they both get up and leave the room, “Avoiding the question, are we, dickface? Hah, well, I don’t even care.” As Ben leaves the house Beatrice tells him, “We’ll talk about the plan later, yeah?”

  
Ben calls back, “Alright, yeah.”

\------

For the rest of the week Benedick and Beatrice are suspiciously quiet. Their friends notice, but whenever they bring it up, Ben and Bea brush it aside.

  
On Friday Bea comes up to Ben’s locker, “Alright, I think I’ve got some ideas now, how about you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, in high school I had a trig teacher who had us sing songs about sine and cosine. Unfortunately, (or fortunately?) I can’t remember how those songs go.  
> But I don’t know if holiday carols are a thing that happens in New Zealand. I don’t know anything about New Zealand, really. I am out of my element.  
> This fic comes courtesy of Sketch, who wanted to see more queer platonic Ben and Bea.


End file.
